~Hakurei Shrine~ > Alice's Art Atelier
Art Tips Thread II
Maple:
The other day i noticed that although i'm good at shading with graphite pencils, i don't know how to use colored pencils, it's either too faint or too harsh and scratched, talking about textures. Spoiler: I once commented that i could do better color using only black pencils. I was going to post yesterday and i also noticed that a lot of links in the OP are dead.
Mеа:
That Figure Drawing book just arrive today. Only been through a few pages, but I'm really enjoying it. The presentation is colourful and appealing. Having a book feels so good, unlike the crampiness of pdfs onscreen. I hope to get through a couple pages a day. Not sure what I was expecting, more like a crappy anatomy compendium I guess, but this is really nice. Figure drawing, I suppose. Not how to draw anatomy tuts. Anatomy seems pretty far in later.
Hannibal_Kills:
--- Quote from: Kitten4u on September 07, 2015, 08:44:59 PM ---If you're just looking for a place to start then I actually recommend copying other things you see, whether it be other paintings (even then it can be anything from a photograph, to a old master painting to a random image on Danbooru that you like) or objects from life. Drawing from another 2D image will be easier because then you can just focus on the shapes rather than try to figure out exactly how to translate a 3D object to a 2D surface. Also, to clarify, I mean copy, not trace. Tracing will not help you, but copying is much more useful than it sounds, and I'm surprised it doesn't get recommended more often.
For me, the first hurdle with painting was training my eyes to see what's actually there rather than what my brain thinks is there. In order to avoid overwhelming us with information, our brains developed a very effective auto-correct system and simplification system that we as artists have to learn to look past in order to accurately portray what we see. By copying something, you're learning to look at what's actually there rather than what you think is there. It's important to take it really slow so that you make sure you're really paying attention to everything there. Besides helping you learn to train your eyes, if you're copying photographs or other works that you consider 'good' or 'high quality' you're giving yourself a baseline for your own work. You'll just start understanding whether or not something is 'correct' because you've been looking at it and emulating it for so long. This will help you spot mistakes in your own work so that you can go correct them.
For techniques, there's one that I think carries over regardless of what you want to draw, the medium you want to use, or any other techniques you find you like: an iterative approach. What I mean by that, is that you don't want to jump into details right away, rather you want to start with the simpler shapes and then fill in the details so that you can see the whole image first and make sure your composition's good, your proportions are correct etc. This post shows it better than I explain it. See how the artist blocks out the simple shapes first and then starts adding details?
For medium, most of what you learn from one medium will carry over to others just fine; you'll have to learn the quirks of whatever particular medium you want to use. So, if you know you want to do digital I don't think there's anything wrong with picking up a tablet and diving right into it. If you're not sure you'll like the hobby, or just can't afford a tablet right now, then starting out with a pencil and paper won't slow you down any if you decide to switch to digital later. Don't worry about it too much, the important part is just drawing.
With all that said, in my opinion, the most important thing you can do to learn how to draw is draw what you like. Learning how to draw can be frustrating, so it's important to keep it fun. Besides, no one becomes an artist 'to get better,' they do it because there's stuff they want to draw. So, be sure to do whatever's fun for you.
--- End quote ---
I always re-draw my game screenshots instead of using my imagination to create one picture. Never knew it's a really good tip.
Z_A:
I wonder if someone ever visits this thread these days, huh... Starting my own thread would be a bad idea as well, since I am not posting any of my work. Yet.
Anyway, what I wanted to ask for advice on was... no, that requires a bit of introduction. I made several Touhou arrangements using a midi editor. That's the reason I wouldn't post those: it seems, most people here just hate the default Windows midi soundfont (taken from some Roland synth, as far as I know). Well, it doesn't sound very good, but it's free, it's recognizable and really widespread, since Windows is so popular, and some other platforms don't have a default way of playing midi at all. Good or bad, however, it doesn't matter; what matter is that a midi file isn't actually real music. I feel like i'm kind of stuck at this point. I'd like to share my works, have them evaluated, criticized etc. But to do that, I need to convert them from midi to something else. And probably use a different soundfont, too. In this forum, I've learned about something that is called a DAW. So, in order to do that, I need one of those, then? Right? Or am I missing something? There was a lot discussed about art here, but much less about music, so please, could you guide me anyhow?
Mеа:
Maybe people do hate the sound of the default windows midi instruments, maybe others don't care, but my gripe with it is that midi doesn't feel like a very responsible or considerate form to submit your work in. For starters, it's not very nice to have to ask the audience to download the file, load up a midi player, load the file, select the instruments, and then finally after all this to play the file. People don't have long attention spans and I certainly feel less inclined to go listen to something when I need to go through all these steps to listen to it. One link. I appreciate it when all I have to do is click on one link to listen to the music.
And second, as a creator, you have no control over how the listener experiences your work. Which is why you should select your own instruments and create the final music file yourself. Retain artistic integrity and control and all that.
DAWs are a good way of doing that. There are plenty of free ones out there which you can find on the google machine. There are also lots of free vsts that you can download, virtual instruments, among which you can pick out the one that you would like your notes to be played by. I'm not super well-versed with the usage of these because I don't use these much, but simple experimentation with them works well most of the time.
So: go pick out a free DAW, go pick out some free vsts, go make some noise.
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